US bishops want President Biden to stop receiving wafers

It is only the second time in history that a Catholic president has been in the White House. For that president, however, an excommunication light threatens. On Friday, a large majority of US bishops voted to investigate the possibility of denying the host to “Catholics who are cultural, political or spiritual leaders” if they support abortion. President Joe Biden is for women’s right to terminate pregnancy.

The decision of the bishops at their annual spring meeting is a first step towards the exclusion of Biden from one of the sacraments of the Catholic Church. According to the 55 bishops who voted against (as opposed to 168 in favour), the motion is specifically directed against the president. Biden says he is not a devout Catholic, but he is a faithful churchgoer, who goes to Mass every Sunday – and celebrates the Eucharist there.

Support for gay rights

Immediately after Biden won the election, the US bishops association set up a working group to study the “problem,” as Bishops Conference President José Gomez called it, of Biden and his policies on abortion and LGBTQI rights. The purpose of the working group is to prepare a document that bishops will vote on in their fall conference. Two-thirds must then agree to have the document adopted. Cardinal Wilton Gregory of Washington has already announced that the priests of his archdiocese of Biden will not refuse the host.

Biden himself wasted no time on the pastoral decision. Reporters asked the president for a comment on Friday. “That’s a private matter,” he said. “I don’t think it’s going to happen.” Pope Francis has not commented on the decision of the American bishops. In May, the Vatican urged the American Episcopal Conference to find unity in making such a drastic decision.

The issue appears to highlight tensions in a church struggling with declining membership. Multi-year research by the Gallup agency shows that secularization has hit the Catholic Church in the United States harder than the Protestant Church. Over the past two decades, the degree of clergy among American Catholics has declined from 76 percent to 58 percent.

Abuse Affaires

The Catholic Church in the US has been hit by major scandals surrounding the abuse of children in its care. In several dioceses, investigations have uncovered years of abuse affairs involving hundreds of priests and thousands of children. Damage claims have brought some dioceses to the brink of bankruptcy. Cardinal Gregory’s predecessor has resigned as Archbishop of Washington.

That a church-going president, and one who regularly quotes from the Bible in speeches, holds such progressive views on issues like abortion must have angered American church leaders, Massimo Faggioli told The Washington Post. Faggioli is a professor at the Catholic Villanova University in Pennsylvania and the author of the book Joe Biden and Catholicism in the United States. “It is remarkable that the bishops have been looking for a way to punish him for seven months,” Faggioli said. “And Joe Biden has completely ignored them.”

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